If Someone Rises
Sunday, September 30th, 2007
Eighteenth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Luke 16:19-31
Theme: Do we truly live like we believe?

19“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ 27He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Do you remember the morning after you made your profession of faith? Did it feel different? Did anything sound different, look different, taste different to you?

I remember the morning after I made my public profession of faith, but in all honesty, not for the reasons I WISH I could name here, but for other, very self-centered ones. That day was my tenth birthday, and it was the last day of First Baptist church of Paducah’s youth camp at Natchez Trace State Park in western Tennessee, and I distinctly remember being terribly disillusioned that the entire camp didn’t stop and at LEAST sing me happy birthday. Then again, I WAS only ten. Though probably old enough to know better, still and all, it was an indicator of what my biggest struggle would be with in the following years as I grew up and as I matured as a follower of Christ.

It seems that, all things being equal, our emotional and physical wellbeing, our creature comforts and social network – meaning family and friends – if we were to try to spell out how exactly we’ve lived our lives differently from the person down the street who has never set foot in a sanctuary, who doesn’t give much thought to the place God might or might not have in the universe, much less their lives, but who lives a socially acceptable, law-abiding life, would we be able to? Could we point to specific acts, or thoughts, relationships and how they are conducted, that would distinguish those who claim to follow Christ as Lord of their lives and those who don’t?

That can be taken a couple of ways. It could be understood to be an indicator of how influential the body of believers who meet here on a regular basis has been, or ALL the congregations in the area have been in forming a Christ-like ethos – a Christ-like spirit in our community over the time we have been here. While that MIGHT be the case, if we look at the general spirit and character of the community, while we can agree that it is … more pleasant than some others in our state, it falls considerably short of being one that could be considered to be TRULY Christ-like. Even a quick read of our weekly local paper would put that idea to rest.

So how DO we distinguish ourselves as followers of Christ? By coming here on Sundays and Wednesday, or by knowing how to navigate the intricacies of Church life? By knowing what the Alma Hunt, or the Lottie Moon, or the Annie Armstrong Offerings are? By understanding the term ‘profession of faith’?

In telling the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus himself didn’t really give any details about where the two men’s hearts were. He just described the conditions they each lived in. The rich man was VERY rich – fine linen was a product of Egypt, and was expensive and rare. Likewise, the dye to make the purple cloth that he wore was also hard to come by, since it was made from a shellfish’s shell, and the mention of the fact that he wore purple cloth was a way of telegraphing to the listeners the fact that the man would probably be the equivalent of at least a multimillionaire in our day. Lazarus, on the other hand, is described in a way that is as eloquent today as it was then. He begged on the street, lay at the gate of the rich man’s house, and longed to satisfy his hunger with the scraps that dropped from the rich man’s table.

We’re given two lives from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, and that is all. There is no value judgment placed on their lives. There’s no storyteller’s note saying “the rich man was a cold-hearted, mean-spirited, thieving, greedy excuse for a human being, and Lazarus was a saint in beggar’s rags”, no. There’s nothing quite that clear in the parable.

What becomes patently clear is that SOMETHING WAS different between them, when we read of their afterlife. And this is where we begin to feel a little uncomfortable. Even the poorest of us can go to our closet and pull out clothes and shoes that would make even the rich man gasp in wonder at our wealth. We eat better than three quarters of the world’s population, and last time I checked I know of no one in our congregation who spends their days laying around at the entrance gate to one of our houses, waiting for the scraps to be thrown out in order to eat.

What was Jesus saying then, about the way people live their lives?

It’s important to keep in mind where this parable falls in the narrative that Luke is presenting. It is just after the parable of the dishonest manager, but between the two, Luke makes it a point to contextualize the telling of the parables. He offers this comment:

"The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him [Jesus]. So he said to them, 'you are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God'" (Luke 16:14).

So we have an idea of WHO it was that Jesus was directing the parables to: the well-established and comfortable-in-their place leaders of the temple.

It is hard to try to deconstruct the parable simply in terms of its face value. We can take the original Greek and discuss what the different words mean EXACTLY, or what verb tense may have been used in one place and why a different tense might have been used elsewhere, and it would end up probably being a fascinating piece of information, full of nuances and highlights that would give us a clearer idea of how it might have affected the lives of those Pharisees… but that’s not the point of the parable for US.

The point of the parable is to connect with the audience – whether a first century or a TWENTY-first century one.

We’re tempted to dwell on the particulars of the story – the fact that the rich man wore purple and fine linen, or that Lazarus is the only named character in any of Jesus’ parables throughout the gospel of Luke, or in the details of the afterlife – the references to burning and pain and torture that the rich man is suffering and the fact the Lazarus is standing next to Abraham. None of those are the central focus of the parable.

The point is found at the end.

Jesus was telling those who were listening to him tell these stories that they were hard of heart. That means they had no sympathy, no compassion. They had lost the ability to put themselves in someone else’s place, someone else’s shoes, or begging spot, as the case may be, in order to through that experience, be able gain an understanding of how God feels towards ALL of humanity. They had SO hardened their hearts that even if someone had risen from the dead in front of them, they would find some way to explain it away, and would again miss the whole reason Jesus was standing there talking to them.

So we come to the weekly question: what does the parable of the rich man and Lazarus mean for us here today, at Jerusalem Baptist Church in Emmerton?

The question for us from Jesus is still basically the same one he had for the Pharisees: what will it take for you to let what you BELIEVE make a difference in your life? Essentially, UNLESS it changes the way you live, you DON’T, in fact, BELIEVE IT. That’s about as simply as it can be put. There IS one CRITICAL DIFFERENCE between that audience and this. Besides the obvious, time place and culture, we have an event that actually turns this parable from an object lesson into a reality.

The resurrection.

So now we read back over that last sentence:

“… ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

And we realize that we HAVE to take the place of the rich man’s family in the story. We ARE the ones who have ‘Moses and the prophets’ in the form of the Bible – easily available to us, easily studied. We have an abundance of materials and commentaries virtually at our fingertips to open the scriptures to us.

But even more significantly, we HAVE the fact that someone DID rise from the dead to make it even clearer to us what we have to do. The question is, has THAT convinced us?

Do we really live in the reality that death has been defeated? Do we really live in the reality that the dog-eat-dog mentality of the world is the WRONG way to live, and that we are called to a more excellent way – of sharing in each other’s burdens, celebrating each other’s joys, walking beside each other under the Lordship of Christ, finding ways to break in the Kingdom of God here, now, today.

Do we give to the Alma Hunt offering because it’s that time of year or because we understand that through our giving we are enabling the message of the gospel to be shared throughout Virginia and around the world?

Do we come to church to make an appearance, or to actually encounter the word of God – both the written and the living, EXPECTING to be changed by it?

In the words of Paul: “What then, shall we say” – not with our mouths, but with our lives?

We have an opportunity to live out the Kingdom every day. Occasionally, we come across other opportunities. November 3rd through the 10th there is a team going to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi to help rebuild homes that are still needing to BE repaired in the wake of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. If everything works out, a team will be going from Jerusalem to join them. Please pray over the next couple of weeks and ask God for guidance in how to respond to this invitation. The plan is to do light construction, drywall hanging, and painting. There will be other teams there at the same time, so we will not be alone. And there’s a lesson to be learned in that as well – in receiving grace, we are not alone, in extending grace, we are not alone.

In being the body of Christ, we are not alone.

Will we live our lives as if we ARE?

Let’s pray.

So That In Me

Sunday, September 16th, 2007
Sixteenth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1st Timothy 1:12-17

12I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, 13even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. 16But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. 17To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Have you ever noticed how much Paul uses the first person pronoun? This passage is FULL of the ‘I’ and ‘me’ words. “I am grateful’, ‘who has strengthened ME’, ‘because he judged ME faithful’, ‘appointed ME to his service’, ‘I was formerly’, ‘I received’, ‘I had acted’, ‘grace overflowed for ME’, and ‘I am the foremost’. I’ve heard Paul described as, among other things, an egomaniac, always talking about himself, holding himself up as an example, talking about how he was the most zealous, the most dedicated, the best student … we read about it in his letter to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, and in several other places. It is not that different here … but it is important to note WHAT he is saying he excels at. We read in verse fifteen: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the foremost”

Traditionally, Scholars have dated the writing of Paul’s epistle to Timothy between the years 62 and 67 of the Common Era – towards the end of Paul’s ministry. So if we accept that Paul became a follower of the one whom he first persecuted within three to five years of the resurrection, he is writing that he is (STILL) the foremost of sinners even after three decades of ministry; of missionary journeys, of preaching in marketplaces and synagogues, of discipling and teaching and admonishing and cajoling and, in some cases, even some pretty straightforward arm-twisting, as we saw Wednesday before last in studying Philemon.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that somewhere along the way Paul would have reached some sort of milestone when it comes to sinning – something like those signs you see in factories ‘143 days with no accidents’.

It would seem maybe a little more encouraging to read ‘YOU too, can be like ME’ … after all, isn’t that what we WANT to see? That it IS an attainable goal, that we really CAN be free from sin, if even for a short while, or maybe, possibly, hopefully a … LONGER while?

To be a Christian is to be willing to – and to actually engage in the practice of examining – and reexamining – oneself on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. It is to be ready to question one’s motivations, one’s assumptions, and one’s unexpressed thoughts and test them against the witness of the Holy Spirit. It is to be on the prowl, as it were, for those stray thoughts and undercurrents that are so easy to rationalize on one level, but which, when viewed in the light of the Holy Spirit, reveal themselves to be less than what they first appeared to be.

Viewed in that light, then we are faced with the grim reality that faced Paul every day, and which caused him to write so honestly about himself even after thirty years of uninterrupted service of the Lord.

Why would he do that? Why point to himself as the foremost of sinners and in the next breath try to convince others to take him as an example? This is where we have to look at what he is saying, not just at the way in which he is saying it. And what DOES he say? Let’s read verse 16 again:

16But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.

Paul has just finished saying Christ came into the world to save sinners – of which HE (Paul) is the foremost – and that it is BECAUSE OF THAT that PAUL received mercy – so that IN HIM (Paul) Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making HIM an example to those who would come to believe in … who? In Paul? NO! In CHRIST!!!

We like to idealize people that we read about in the Bible. Especially Stephen, the first martyr, or the disciples AFTER the resurrection (we’d rather skip over what they were doing the day BEFORE), and MOST especially, Paul. After all, he DID write all those letters, and made all those trips, and got thrown into prison, and was flogged and beaten and stoned nearly to death. So we almost automatically begin to build this glow about him in our minds … give him a pretty good beard and a clean head of hair, kind and gentle eyes, and a fire in the belly … never mind that for all we know of how Paul actually LOOKED, he could have been covered in warts, walked with a limp, had really bad teeth and had a grating annoying voice. He DID, after all, talk about asking God to remove the thorn in his side …

What I believe Paul is saying is to LOOK at him, YES, but that in looking at him, we realize that we are REALLY looking at ourselves, because we are no different FROM him, or put another way, that HE was no different from US.

The PROBLEM with doing THAT, though, is that it puts us on the same level.

Let me say that again. IT PUTS US ON THE SAME LEVEL.

What does that mean, especially for us here at Jerusalem Baptist Church on Sunday morning, September 16th, 2007?

It means we can expect to hold ourselves to the same standards that Paul did HIMSELF. It means that we are CAPABLE of being JUST AS BOLD as Paul was. It means that we can be just as CONTENTIOUS as Paul SOMETIMES was (as good Baptists, I think we’ve got that one covered!).

It also means that we can express ourselves just as Paul did, with the same depth of emotion, with the same feeling, with the same conviction, with the same passion that Paul did. It means that we can hold each other accountable just like Paul demanded accountability from Peter when he flipped on the issue of eating with gentiles. I wonder if I’m using the correct word. Maybe another word would be more appropriate – not only CAN we do these things, but we are RESPONSIBLE FOR doing these things. It is part of our calling, part of what makes us who we are – not as Baptists, but as Christ-followers.

You’ve heard me say it before and I will continue to say it until we begin to understand and practice what it means to LIVE IN COMMUNITY with each other.

I don’t mean ‘live IN the same community’, I don’t mean ‘neighborhood’, I mean FAMILY. THAT is the community spoken of in the New Testament. That is what WE HERE TODAY are still trying to hash out on a daily and weekly basis. And if we’re not working on it, working on building relationships, working on MENDING relationships, working on getting to know – REALLY KNOW each other EVEN THOUGH we’ve known each other all our lives, we are missing out on the greatest blessing that we can ever experience here on earth – that of being surrounded by and being a part of a family of faith that loves and supports one another, that breathes in the Holy Spirit and breathes out the love of God in their everyday life.

We’re not trying to RETURN to the faith community that we read about in Acts, we’re trying to understand what it means to BE IN that same KIND of faith community TODAY in Emmerton. We can’t recreate the first century church because we don’t live in the first century. We are TASKED with creating the twenty-first century church the body of Christ – building on what we can learn and have learned from the church that has been made up of people just like us working out their salvation with fear and trembling for the last twenty centuries!

We CAN do it. We CAN, we ARE capable of being sensitive enough to the leading of the Holy Spirit to take the next step. The question is, what will that step look like? Where will it take us?

We don’t HAVE TO know. It would be nice to, but we don’t have to. That is where FAITH comes in.

God has given us the word of grace and salvation to take to the world.

Will we pass it on?

Let’s pray.

Absolutes

(Formerly: None of You)
Sunday, September 9th, 2007
Fifteenth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Luke 14:25-33

25Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, 26“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my
disciple. 28For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? 29Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

“All your possessions”

“ALL your possessions”

“NONE of you”

“NONE OF YOU”

Just wanted to make sure we all heard those last phrases from Jesus.

Several weeks ago, as I was planning out the 6 weeks or so we are about to wrap up, today’s message title came out of what initially struck me the most from the Gospel passage for this morning – and that was – at first – Jesus’ words “none of you”. I typed it in along with the general theme of the service, and the responsive reading selection, and went on to the next week’s scriptures, and a couple of weeks later I was looking back over the list in preparation for what was to come, and read back over the passage … and noticed in the second reading that there are MORE phrases or words that carry the weight of ‘totality’ with them in what Jesus was saying – two words: ‘whoever (does not hate (v 26), does not carry the cross and follow me (v 27)’ and ‘cannot’(be my disciple x 2). In my mind the title of the message changed from what you see in the bulletin to a single word: ‘Absolutes.’

This is one of the most discomforting sayings of Jesus for me. And you know what is interesting? It has become MORE discomforting as I’ve grown older … I remember when I was a freshman in college; I didn’t bat an eye when reading this. My thought process was “of COURSE, that’s what it is going to take. It CAN’T take anything less than total commitment, radical commitment, absolute and complete surrender to Christ. I have to be willing to follow him wherever, whenever, however he asks me.” Of course, I was single; I had relatively few earthly possessions, and felt like I was the smartest person in the world. (Not really, but you get the idea!)

Then I grew up a little more, and realized the sacrifice my parents made, that other missionaries made, and that missionaries make every DAY. And I realized how much my parents and brother and sisters and those missionary aunts and uncles meant to me, and how much I loved them, and I read back over the first part of the passage – where Jesus says,

26“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children,
brothers and sisters … cannot be my disciple”

“Does not hate”

Eek.

Luke, if you remember, is one of the synoptic Gospels, that is, one of the three that share much of their content – Matthew and Mark are the other two. If you look in the Gospel according to Matthew, you can find essentially the same discourse, but with slightly different wording – Matthew’s is a little easier to read – there we find the words

26“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

Based on this verse alone, I can see why Matthew’s Gospel became the most popular and therefore appears first in the New Testament. The message is still essentially the same, but he seemed to have more finesse with words.

And that last item in the list – “even life itself” …

I got married to a woman who still to this day amazes me by her passion and humor and grace and wisdom, and we had these three incredible kids who are funny and demanding and obedient (most of the time! ) and smarter than whips, and kind and caring, who lavish us with love and affirmation – MUCH more so than I remember EVER giving MY parents at their age … I get to pastor TWO groups of people who are at the same time walking alongside me in a journey that we are sharing of getting to know Christ, AND are teaching me HOW to be their pastor… sometimes still naïve about some things, and hopefully always open to some new insight, other times wrestling with issues and situations that I’m sure have confounded pastors throughout the centuries … it’s all good, and it IS a wonderful life … I have been blessed to have become a part of your lives over the last four years.

But does Luke then, expect me to understand that Jesus wants me to actually HATE my parents, brother and sisters, and life?

Before we dismissively say ‘of course not, we just need to love HIM so much more than them that comparing the two would be like comparing love and hate’, we need to understand the context that Luke is sending his Gospel into.

Scholars date the writing of the Gospel anywhere between 35 to as much as 50 years or more after the resurrection. In the intervening decades, Christianity has spread, and it has also begun to suffer some of the beginnings of more extensive persecution to come. Some followers of Christ were growing fainthearted in the face of that; some were even abandoning the faith. They were facing imprisonment, expulsion from their known world and environment, and just couldn’t handle it.

We’re again faced with a situation for which we really have little point of reference. It might be different if we lived in a country where becoming a follower of Christ puts you at risk of being cut off from your family. Has anyone here been cut off from their family because they became a follower of Christ? It DOES still happen. People ARE still paying with their lives for following Christ. In some cases, it is paying with the lives they have known up until that point – the person loses their job, is cut off from their family, becomes a non-person in the prevailing culture … but is still physically alive. In other cases it is in fact their life that they lose.

But not here.

And that is where WE are. So how do we apply this text to OUR situation, to OUR context? What does it mean to Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Do we go back to the comparison between the degrees of love, love for Christ up here, love for family and life down there, but still love? Do we take it literally and start stoking a hate for our family and life?

I think the distinction needs to be made about the context. We are blessed to be surrounded by family who, for the most part, though maybe not entirely, affirms our decision to be followers of Christ. We didn’t risk much in choosing to follow Jesus. Or did we?

We are still called to die to ourselves. We are still called to surrender everything to the Lordship of Christ. We are still …called. And we are still SUBJECT to being called to do something we may not be thrilled about doing but that Christ still demands of us.

So we are still subject to the cost of being a disciple. And THAT was Luke’s point here. He put it in concrete terms for those who were choosing to remain with family or choosing the life they had lead up until then over following Jesus, when following Jesus would have meant losing those things.

Jesus’ words apply as much to us today because we STILL have to wrestle with what we are willing to give up in order to follow Jesus, in order to truly let Jesus be Lord of our lives. What is it that we don’t want to surrender to Christ? What are we less than thrilled about putting below our allegiance to Jesus? Are we willing to put our citizenship under the Lordship of Christ? Are we willing to say ‘I am a Christian first, a citizen of the United States second?’ Are we willing to put our pride in our history – even our family history – in this church under the Lordship of Christ? Are we willing to envision – and enact – what God wants to do through Jerusalem that would surprise and maybe even annoy our grandparents or great grandparents?

Look around. Are there more empty seats than there are occupied seats around you? Are we willing to submit who we are willing to sit and stand next to in worship to the Lordship of Christ? Jerusalem has a history for which we can be grateful, but our future is what is going to count just as much as our past. It is what happens from here on out that will determine the impact we have on our community as it is NOW as well as what IT is becoming.

A couple of Wednesdays ago we studied the passage that comes right before this one – where Jesus tells the parable of the guests invited to a great dinner – those guests – the “A” list folks, came up with excuses for not coming to the banquet – one had just bought some oxen and needed to check them out, another bought some land, another had just gotten married … in short, all the people one would ‘WANT’ to be seen with begged off and gave some excuse for not coming. So the master told his servant to go out in the street and call in anyone they saw – the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

Who do we relate to in the story? Are we expecting the invitation, or are we surprised that we were even invited?

God’s grace is like that. Are we still overwhelmed by the fact that Christ counted us worth dying for, or do we sit back and say maybe mostly to ourselves, “well, of COURSE I’m worth dying for!”

It still surprises me, how much we … I have to work on submitting to Jesus. It’s a daily process, a daily examination, and a daily surrender.

Let’s pray.

Yesterday, Today and Forever

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007
Fourteenth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Hebrews 13:1-8; 15-16

1Let mutual love continue. 2Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. 3Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. 4Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. 5Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” 6So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?” 7Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. 8Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. 15Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. 16Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

What exactly does it mean to say for something to ‘continue’? What is implied in the use of the word? How is it different to say ‘continue’ as opposed to saying ‘start’? (Take answers)

To say ‘continue’ is to understand that something is already happening.

Does it seem unusual to you to jump into this morning’s passage and hear the writer of the epistle tell the folks being written to to continue to love each other mutually?

In terms of familiarity with scripture, no, it probably is not that unusual to read it. There are, after all, many other instances where the exhortation from the writers to the listeners was to continue to love each other.

But remember, we are not the original recipients of these letters. We ARE, I believe, INTENDED to receive these scriptures, but in purely physical, logistical terms, ours was not the address on the envelope when the letter was first mailed. But here we sit, nearly two thousand years after the pen was first laid to parchment, or papyrus, or vellum, or whatever medium was used to write on, thousands of miles from where the letter was first circulated, and we are supposed to figure out how this passage applies to us here today in Emmerton, at Jerusalem Baptist Church.

That is the beauty of having access to the Living Word of God. Even though it was written so long ago to a PEOPLE so far away, it is still relevant to US, here and now.

So we’re being told to let mutual love continue. Again, that is presupposing that the love was there before.

I’m going to take a few moments and invite us to share in another moment of silence. Not as long as our DISCIPLINE of silence, but I want us to concentrate for just a couple of dozen seconds on the people who are no longer in this room, but who once WERE.

I want us to think back over the last several years, even before we came to be with you, and I want us to play back in our minds, at random, just one or two events in which we interacted with one or two or three of the people who are no longer here. Whether that person is not here because they have passed away or have since moved on to another fellowship or moved away from the area is not important right now. What I want us to focus on is what emotion is coaxed from us by replaying that memory we have of them.

So, close your eyes and spend the next few seconds remembering. It can be a memory associated with being in this building or anywhere else, it is not geographically limited, but it TEMPORALY limited. It DOES need to involve someone with whom you have more or less lost contact. Ok. Go.

What is the emotion associated with the memory? Is it joy? Is it sorrow? Is it anger? Is it … indifference? Do we miss that person? Are we secretly relieved that that person is not around any more? Do we wonder how they are doing, if they are still alive? Do we miss talking to them, miss interacting with them?

Okay. Hold that thought, that emotion, that memory for a few minutes. We’ll come back to it.

Next question: what does it mean to be a Christian, to be a follower of Christ? Is it to hold to a certain set of beliefs and tenets of faith? Is it to understand the world and the universe in a certain way? Does it mean to behave in certain ways at certain times? (Take answers)

I think we can all agree that it’s not any one of those things, but rather a blend of all of them. To be a follower of Christ is to believe certain things, to have a certain perspective on the world, AND to DO certain things – and in truth to NOT do certain things – as a result of holding to those beliefs and views.

Any conversation, any definition of what it means to be a follower of Christ is incomplete from our perspective as Baptists if we do not also recognize and name the single most radical (basic) issue in being a follower of Christ – and that is to have a relationship with the risen Lord.

That having been said, the question we need to ask ourselves this morning is, how have we lived our lives this past week in a manner consistent with that? Is being a Christian a matter of culture for us? Are we Christian because we live in a supposedly predominantly Christian country? Are we Christian because it is easier to be a part of this community if we are identified as such?

In the first century Roman Empire, being a Christian was counter cultural. We became aware of that term in the 60’s, with all the social upheavals that decade brought, but it may have predated that decade and the term may actually have been coined in the 50’s with what was known as the “beat generation” … people who were intentionally living against the grain of the prevailing culture. I suspect that if we studied our history closely enough, we’d find counter-cultural pockets throughout.

The Christians who first received this letter were embarking on a life experience that was much more perilous for them than ours probably is for us. Choosing to follow Christ in the first century frequently involved the risk of losing at the LEAST one’s standing, job, family, or even life in a community and culture that would have been predominantly pantheistic, that is, that believed in a multitude of gods, would have been … let me make up a word here – polymoral – that is, society understood that by virtue of the fact that there existed a multitude of gods, there existed also a multitude of moral codes … which is to say, in essence, that there WAS no ONE moral code, no absolute sense of right and wrong. It was, in practice and in fact, an amoral society – one with NO defining moral outlook. Hmm … does THAT ring a bell? Have you taken a look at the magazines that are on sale in the checkout line at the grocery store? I believe on the whole, that the Church has had a positive influence on our culture, but not so much as to yet consider the Kingdom of God to be broken in.

And here we have this writer telling people to again, CONTINUE to love one another, to show hospitality to strangers, to honor the marriage covenant, to be sexually pure, to not be greedy, to be content with what they have, to remember their leaders, and if they live THEIR lives as good examples, to follow those examples.

These are fairly basic, nuts and bolts ideas on how to live their lives as followers of Jesus Christ. The thing about these instructions, though, is that … they are not in ANY way that I can tell LIMITED in their applicability to the people who lived during the first century. ALL of these are just as relevant to our lives today in 21st century Virginia as they were to 1st century Asia Minor.

Did you hear that? That was the sound of 20 centuries of intervening history melting away through the prompting of the Holy Spirit. (grin)

So let’s get back to that first thing we were doing.

Remember the emotion you felt in relation to that certain person or those certain people that you brought to mind in our exercise at the beginning of the message?

It’s easy to do that exercise thinking of someone with whom you are unlikely to have continued contact. There’s a buffer built into it in the understanding that to whatever degree it might be the case, what’s done is done. There’s very little that can be done about that relationship now – very little expectation placed on us in a situation that cannot be resolved or addressed without both parties present.

It is a little harder to face the completion of that exercise with a slightly more immediate focus. Look around. Go ahead, look around. I want us to get a really good idea of who is here in the room with us. Now, while you are looking around, as different people come into your line of sight, I want you to think back on some interaction you had with each of the people you are seeing. Now we go back through the same questions as with the other person: What is the emotion associated with the memory? Is it joy? Is it sorrow? Is it anger? Is it … indifference? Or is it a little stronger? Are you feeling an emotion that you would rather not associate with being in Church? Are you having trouble being in the same room with the person?

Now let’s get to the point. What this means for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton on the 2nd of September of 2007.

We are each wired different. You’ve heard the term polar opposites? Do you know where the term comes from? It is a description of magnetic forces. Have you ever tried to force the two positive or the two negative ends of two magnets together? It can’t be done. You may be able to hold them together by applying continual force, but once that force is removed, or eased, the two ends move apart.

I’m not naïve enough to expect us all to get along.

We are not called by God to become identical to each other, seeing the world the same way, holding the same views, understanding things in exactly the same way, LIKING the same songs, the same forms of worship, the same versions of scripture, the same Sunday school literature. God’s infinite creativity made us each as individuals, with equal worth in God’s eyes.

If the emotion you were feeling a few minutes ago in any way caused you to view the person prompting those feelings as anything less than a beloved child of God, then your relationship with that person is broken. God didn’t call us to be like each other, God didn’t call us to like each other. God DID call us to LOVE each other, to be in relationship with each other just as the different members of our bodies are part of one body. You’ve heard the passage from 1st Corinthians 12 – if you are not familiar with it, start reading at verse 12 and keep going. The RUB is the difference between not liking someone and yet being called to love them. That can be hard at times.

Folks, this is basic elemental Christianity. If we can’t treat each other with love and respect, accepting our differences and still agreeing to join together in genuine fellowship and in working toward the inbreaking of the kingdom of God, all we’re doing is going through the motions, we’re paying lip service to what following Christ means. In case you were wondering, that means we’re SAYING one thing, but actually living a totally different reality. More to the point, Jesus talked about thoughts as much as deeds. What is in your HEART makes as much difference as what comes out through your lips.

Jerusalem has a challenge for the incoming year. It’s actually the same challenge that faces each of us each day of our lives. Will we let our lives reflect what we say we believe, or will we just lay low, pretend to be a family when in fact we would just as soon not be anywhere near each other, not feel the need in any way to pick up the phone or to knock on the door, or … maybe even walk across the room and say ‘you are my brother in Christ, you are my sister in Christ, I DO love you, but I need you to help me reestablish our relationship, because it has not been there for some time now.’

This is where the reality of what the writer to the Hebrews was dealing with intersects with our own reality. What is more important to us? Being right or being forgiven? Will we forget that we are all fallen sinners, none deserving, but blessed by the grace of God to have received God’s forgiveness? Or will we let pride keep us from taking that first step towards redeeming relationships?

Let’s pray.

You have, O God, shown us the way. You made yourself human and lowered yourself to the form of a servant even unto death. So teach us to die to ourselves not just in our relationship with you, but even in our daily relationships with each other, so that it will be YOU shining through in ALL that we do, through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Our hymn of response is ‘Redeemed How I Love to Proclaim It’, number 544. I would caution you that as you sing it, don’t for a minute think that we can sing about being redeemed by the blood of the lamb for salvation and it have NO bearing on ALL our other relationships, ESPECIALLY with those whom we call brothers and sisters in Christ. Let’s stand and sing.